
C-'^^'S 



AN 



ADDREISIS, 



DELIVERED AT THE CONSECRATION 



LINDEN GEOVE CEMETEEY, 



COVINGTON, KENTUCKY, 
September 11, 1843. 



BY 



BELLAMY STORER, ESa. 



PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE TRUSTEES. 

CINCINNATI: 

E. MORGAN AND COMPANY. 

1843^ 



DESCRIPTION OF 

LINDEN GROVE CEMETERY. 



The Linden Grove Cemetery is situated in the environs of Cov- 
ington, Kentucky, directly opposite to the City of Cincinnati, and a mile 
distant from the Ohio river. It is laid out by the "Trustees of the Western 
Baptist Theological Institute," and is a part of the estate originally pur- 
chased for the purposes of their association. 

extent of ground and state of improvement. 

The area appropriated by the Trustees for the use of this cemetery em- 
braces about SIXTY ACRES of high table land, overlooking the City of Cin- 
cinnati, and situated in the midst of the most -quiet and romantic scenery, 
being surrounded on three sides by lofty hills and dark luxuriant forests. 
Nearly one half of the grounds have been strongly and handsomely enclo- 
sed by a close board picketed fence seven feet in height, and intersected 
with a great variety of avenues and foot-paths, all handsomely excavated, 
forming a continuous promenade, within that portion of the ground already 
enclosed, of upwards of three miles in extent. 

All the main avenues in the cemetery are already adorned on either 
side with native and other forest trees, among which are the linden, locust, 
elm, ash, sycamore, oak, maple, tulip, white walnut, mulberry, catalpa, 
ailanthus, larch, &c. together with six or seven hundred evergreens, con- 
sisting of cedar, silver fir and hemlock. 

Descending from the avenues and paths which skirt the margins of the 
dells and deep glens, you enter the ravines, along whose serpentine wind- 
ings grass paths have been formed by an embankment of sod excavated 
from either side of the paths. These grassy paths, as they are traversed, 
lead to various interesting improvements on the way, such as a large clear 
fountain of water, handsomely walled, embanked and sodded, the waste 
water from which, winding its silent Avay down the glen along the path 
side, discharges itself into a circular artificial pond, which constantly, as it 
receives fresh supplies from the spring above, discharges itself into the glen 
beyond. The descent to these grassy walks is not only through the natu- 



ral entrance to the ravines, but by numerous flights of grass steps con- 
structed at appropriate points. The green banks along the depth of the 
ravines are most appropriately formed for the erection of tombs, and many 
most desirable locations may be selected for that purpose. 
porter's lodge. 
The gardener's or porter's lodge commands the entrance to the cemetery. 
The building has an imposing brick front of forty feet in width, two stories 
high, with an arched gateway in its centre, on either side of which, in the 
rear, is a wing constructed for the permanent residence of the porter and 
his family. Immediately over the arch, at the entrance of the gate, is in- 
serted in the brick work a large stone tablet, on which is cut the inscrip- 
tion "Linden Grove Cemetery," and beneath it are the words of the 
Saviour as he stood at the tomb of Lazarus, "7 am the resurrection a?id 
the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live, 
end, he that believeth on me shall never die" 

PUBLIC VAULT. 

Embosomed in the circular bower, formed of locust trees, near the mid- 
dle of the cemetery, is a neat and commodious public vault, for the tempo- 
rary deposit of bodies in cases where it is desired to delay their final burial 
for a limited time, 

CONSECRATION. 

This beautiful spot was consecrated on the 1 1th September, 1843. The 
ceremonies were as follows: 

I. Hymn, sung by the choir — 

<'Sweet is the scene when christians die, 

When Iwly souls retire to rest; 
How mildly beams tiie closing' eye, 

How gently heaves tli' expiring breast! 

So fades a summer cloud away; 

So sinks the gale when storms are o'er; 
So, gently, shuts the eye of day; 

So dies a wave along the shore. 

Triumphant smiles the Victor's brow, 

Fann'd by some guardian angel's wing: 
O grave! where is ihy vict'ry now, 

And where, O death! where is thy stiiig.'" 

II. Selections from the Scriptures by the Rev. Mr. Moore, of the Epis- 
copal Church. John, xi, v. 22 to 44; 1 Cor. xv, v. 34 to 68. 

III. Prayer by the Rev. Mr. Cressy, of the Baptist Church. 

IV. Addresses by B. Storer, Esq. of the Episcopal, and Rev. Dr. 
Stowe, of the Presbyterian Church. 

V. Music by the choir. 

VI. Benediction by the Rev. Dr. Lynd, of the Baptist Church. 



y 



ADDRESS. 



We are assembled to consecrate this beautiful spot, a pious 
oftering from the living to the dead; to set apart from all other 
uses a portion of our mother earth, where dust may mingle with 
dust, and affection, in the countless forms the heart may dictate, 
erect her memorials to departed worth. And it is just that we 
should hallow this city of the dead, before the humble slab or the 
lofty column bespeak its tenanted graves — while yet the green 
earth is fresh from the hand of Nature, and yon majestic trees 
tower in their strength, it is in delightful harmony with the moral 
feelings to dedicate a place like this, where generations yet to 
come may slumber in peace until the final consummation. 

We do not, in the scene before us, behold an enclosure where 
pomp and pride have, in their exclusive spirit, designated that 
none but the noble and the great shall be sepultured, and the pri- 
vilege of appropriating, for a few years, a narrow habitation, is to 
be alone the right of wealth and rank, but, with a feeling at once 
elevated and chastened, we are assured that in these avenues all 
of humanity will be permitted to assemble, and, throughout this 
wide cemetery, the wise and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, 
may lie down together. If distinctions exist in life, they are 
effectually levelled here. Accident may have separated us into 
classes, but the common destiny of our race breaks up all divisions, 
and, beneath the clods of the valley, silences, forever, every ex-- 
clusive claim — 

" For, none but the worm is a reveler liere." 

From the earliest ages, the fondest wishes, the most anxious 
fears, of our race have been indulged for the sepulture of those 
they have loved. The first estate that was claimed by purchase 
was the cave of the Patriarch; of that favored possession, he 
was invested with all the formalities of primitive tenure; and 



when the venerable man, in the beautifully pathetic relation of 
scripture, stood up from before his dead, saying, in the sorrow of 
his heart, to the sons of Heth, "1 am a stranger and sojourner 
with you; give me a possession of a burying place, where I can 
bury my dead out of my sight," he struck a cord in the sympa- 
thies of those he addressed, which responded at once to his ap- 
peal, "In the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead." Here, in 
the comparative infancy of the world's history, that mysterious 
element of our being was developed, which, through all subse- 
quent time, among the most barbarous as well as civilized, has 
given to the dead a habitation and protected it from insult. 

The field of Machpelah, in one of the romantic valleys of Judea, 
near to Hebron, which became the burial place of Abraham and 
his descendants, must have been selected for its beauty. He had 
traversed the whole land of Canaan, with an eye quickened to the 
perception of the lovely in nature, from his oriental education, 
and when, in his purchase from its proprietors, he stipulated for 
all "the trees of the field, and the borders round about," we are 
impressed with his delicate sensibility and pure taste, to say no- 
thing of the high moral and religious purpose, he hoped to ac- 
complish by this public act of regard for the dead, in its influence 
on the living. From the era of their great ancestor to our own 
time, the sentiment he exhibited has ever been indulged by the 
Jews: whatever may have been their condition, the last oflices to 
the dead have claimed their peculiar regard. Beneath the soil of 
Judea it has ever been their hope finally to be deposited; and 
when buried in a foreign land, a portion of the dust of Palestine 
has often mingled with their ashes, while their graves have been 
so arranged that, on the morning of the resurrection, to use the 
touching expression of a late writer, "the eye of Jehovah's chosen 
people might rest upon their beloved Jerusalem." 

With the exception of occasional instances to be met with 
amono- the ancients, when the funeral pile was substituted for 
inhumation, or the process of embalming was connected with 
pecuUar religious opinions, the custom of interring the dead has 
been universal. Then the place of sepulture was without the 
walls of cities, in some secluded, silent region. The Romans, we 
are told, had their burying places, not in their temples or fanes, 
nor yet within any enclosure, reputed to be sacred, withm the 



limits of their towns, but in the adjoining country. The Israel- 
ites had theirs in gardens, in fields, and the sides of mountains. 
A Turkish cemetery covers a great extent of ground, each family 
having its particular portion walled in like a garden, where the 
bones of their ancestors have remained for many generations. 
There the graves are all distinct; a stone is placed at the head 
and the feet, and the intermediate space planted with flowers; 
once a year those stones are whitened and these flowers renewed. 

We can readily trace to its origin the practice of interring in 
churches and church yards. In pagan times it was forbidden to 
bury in the temple or its enclosures. In the fourth century, how- 
ever, superstition, among her countless ceremonies, introduced 
the custom, and it obtained extensively, until the Emperor Theo- 
dosius renewed the prohibition, on the ground that graves within 
cities were detrimental to health, and monuments by the way 
side presented salutary memorials to the traveler. But the inno- 
vation, once commenced, gained such strength, that it could not 
be checked. The bodies of martyrs were first deposited in chris- 
tian churches, and their hallowed remains gave additional vener- 
ation to the edifice. To lie beside the canonized saint became 
the ambition of Emperors and Kings; and, in the sixth century, 
the people indiscriminately were allowed places in the church 
yard, as well as under the walls of the church. In the time of 
Charlemagne they were found in the church itself, and, at a coun- 
cil held in his reign, a restriction was for the future laid upon all 
but the clergy. This rule was changed in the tenth century, and 
no distinction permitted. From that period the evils consequent 
upon the repeal of the prohibition have existed throughout Chris- 
tendom; evils often boldly depicted, but never fully appreciated. 

The annals of every large city are full of evidence that the liv- 
ing and the dead ought not to be grouped within the same enclo- 
sure. A truth so important, we would have thought, must have 
had, ere this, an abiding influence upon public sentiment, and 
produced an all-pervading opinion in favor of rural cemeteries; 
yet the prejudice, weak as it is, that would confine interments 
within populous cities, still exerts a powerful sway over the sym- 
pathies of the living. 

There are many arguments against the practice that might 
be urged with appropriate force; a few must sufiice. To say 



8 

nothing of the baneful eflect upon the pubUc health, which 
has been so fully established by medical statistics, we feel that 
the rest of the departed may soon be rudely broken by what, 
in our day, is too often misnamed the march of improve- 
ment, but in reality is no other spirit than innovating exper- 
iment or reckless associated avarice. The moss-covered stone is 
seldom found in the city burying place. Before decay has done its 
\v ork, the hand of man interrupts it, and, in one common dese- 
cration, mingles together the graves of its inmates. Over the rest- 
ing-place of the wise and the good, as well as the vile, the plough- 
share is driven, and the splendid residence, or the capacious busi- 
ness mart, is reared over their ashes. If, perchance, for some 
favored enclosure, there is veneration enough to save it for a few 
years from desolation, yet, even then, the earth has been upturned 
so often that the hallowed spot has become a charnel-house: its 
surface is fearfully raised above the level of the adjacent grounds, 
where a few stinted trees extend their feeble branches, and the 
rank grass grows profusely. Here the heart can find no sympa- 
thy; all is cold, selfish, artificial. The simplicity of nature is 
rejected — the claims of our common humanity postponed — and, 
forgetting that they, too, must soon claim kindred with the dust, 
the living are unmindful of the dead — the dead ! who alone can 
be said, in the fine Hebrew sentiment, "to live truly," 

How far the modern practice of converting places of burial to 
other uses, can be justified by any of the causes that have pro- 
duced it, is a subject for serious consideration, and addresses the 
conscience as well as the heart, in no unmeaning language. But 
we cannot now discuss the question; we leave it, with the many 
kindred innovations upon the moral feelings which have distin- 
guished our age, to the enlightened judgment of our audience. 
We might, however, receive instruction from the monuments of 
that noble race who once inhabited our valley. Those mounds, 
gigantic in structure and regular in form, bespeak not only the 
affection but the reverence of their builders, for the remains of 
their dead; and, casting our memories back into past ages, we 
cannot but admire the regard paid by the warlike people of the 
east to the field of Shechem, where, after a lapse of four hundred 
years, untouched and undesecrated, the descendants of its first 
proprietor deposited the bones of Joseph. 



There is another objection to the city burial place, which, to 
every well regulated nnnd, must address itself with peculiar force; 
we mean the tendency that constant contact has to produce indif- 
ference to the high and solemn associations which should be con- 
nected with the dead. There is no train of reflection more sub- 
dued, nor more instructive, than that which is induced by the 
contemplation of a grave yard. We gather around us, Avhile we 
wander among its monuments, the past, the present, and the fu- 
ture. All of life and of death, and the life to come, are grouped 
in the brief hour! We are dissociated from our fellows! We be- 
come individualized, in the truest sense of the term, and under- 
stand, if we never did before, the meaning of personal account- 
ability, our relation to the world, and to Him who made the 
world! Immortality is, tlien, no abstract opinion — no ordinary 
sentiment — but it comes to us with the force of conviction, and 
responds to the delicately beautiful thought of Gray — 
"E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries — 
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires!" 

But, who can meditate thus in the thronged city, when, in im- 
mediate contact with the home of the dead, are the fashionable 
follies, the gilded vices of the living — when the theatre, the ball 
room, the gaming house, perchance, surround it, and no lesson is 
taught by their proximity that can cheer the crushed or sinking 
spirit, or guide the wanderer to duty and to Heaven? 

Who has not heard, along the wide avenues of our older cities, 
which bound the ancient cemeteries that still remain within their 
limits, the coarse jest, the unmeaning laugh, the bold defiance, the 
horrid blasphemy — and all these when the tolling bell announced 
the reception of a new inmate to its narrow house, or the minister 
of God was engaged in the solemn duties of his office? Such is 
the effect of daily intercourse with objects that should ever be 
disconnected. Blend them together, and their influence is to 
harden the heart — to chill the afl'ections. Separate them, and the 
toils of busy life will seek, in the peaceful harmonies of a rural 
burial place, a spot for meditation and repose ! The mourner 
can there hold communion with the departed objects of her love, 
and deck, with pious care, the sod that covers them! She knows 
that, in this silent abode, the noise of the profane multitude is 
unheard! The vulgar intrusions of the curious break not her 



10 

ministry with kindred spirits! Here may be collected the whole 
family of the affections — and, purified by that spiritual inter- 
course which faith holds with those who are already stars in yon 
firmament, we may go forth to the duties of hfe better prepared 
to serve our God and love our fellows. 

We allude to one more consideration to sustain our position. 
Even if the city grave yard should be spared from the public use, 
and common feeling protect it from direct desecration, it is still a 
serious question whether it is a safe depository. The elements 
of which large cities are made up, have been developed, within 
the few past years, with appalling energy. Property and life 
have equally been the sport of their lawless power. As yet, these 
popular outbreaks have assumed no definite form, and Heaven 
grant they never may; but if, in the course of our national pro- 
gress — if, in the great moral and political process which is now at 
work throughout our land, as well as the world, our populous 
communities should become factious, reckless, infidel — if the re- 
straints of good order are cast off, and that fearful epoch should 
arrive when anarchy shall stalk abroad like death in the Apoca- 
lypse, who can say whether churches or grave yards will be spared? 
A few years only have gone by since such scenes were enacted 
in the metropolis of France, the very remembrance of which 
freezes the soul. And further back, in the annals of Britain, we 
may read that the translator of the Bible, the holy Wickliffe, was 
pronounced heretic when in his grave, his body disinterred and 
burned, 

"And to the earth, the soa, the sky, 
They hurl'd his flaming dust !" 

Perhaps we have hazarded a remark that some may think par- 
takes more of foreboding than our present happy condition can 
justify. Be it so; — it is a difference of opinion only. We would 
not measure the strength of our institutions to bear the pressure 
that will, ere long, we fear, fall upon them with tremendous force; 
nor would we calculate the value of our now powerful republic, 
nor yet the chances of its perpetuity. All such questions we 
would avoid, believing and hoping, at all times, for the best; but 
it becomes us to rely, with unshaken confidence, upon Him who 
is above all mutation, and alone controls the destiny of men and 
of governments. 



11 

We have said, that, while the soil of this quiet spot is yet 
unbroken, it is just that we should set it apart as an habita- 
tion for the dead; and our reflections, since we used the ex- 
pression, have confirmed its truth. An old writer quaintly ob- 
serves, "He that lies under the herse of Heaven is convertible into 
sweet herbs and flowers" — a beautiful tribute to the feelings that 
would dedicate a region like this to the departed; for here, under 
the open canopy of Heaven — shaded by no mouldering piles of 
human architecture — pent up by no crowded masses — polluted 
by no indiscriminate use, and yet not made exclusive by any gor- 
geous monuments, set up to pride or title — here we would com- 
mit our dead to the green earth, upon which our taste may plant 
its own fiowery emblems, and our affection bedew them with her 
tears ! 

Let us, then, with all appropriate solemnity, consecrate this 
cemetery. It is truly an occasion calculated to produce, and 
retain in our hearts, the most elevated sentiments — to open upon 
our vision, by the light of faith, the ultimate destiny of man ! 
These are the teachings of eternity! We are here carried back 
to the infancy of our race. We enter, imperfect as we are, the 
early Eden of our progenitor! We wander among the unveiled 
glories of Paradise, and learn what was the origin of man — what 
his capacity — what his privileges! We are then led to the scene 
of his guilt — read the punishment it demanded, and mark with 
what certainty it has, from that period until our day, been execu- 
ted! Death — the scourge of Jehovah, and the just penalty of 
transgression — did not enter the garden ! It was not until its 
helpless inmates were without the gate, that the destroyer could 
claim his victims! 

And now, in this rural spot — so sweet for the eye to rest upon, 
so rich in its verdure — here, where Death will be permitted still 
to reign, we feel the holy assurance that He, who has taken from 
the destroyer his sting, will call up, at his appointed hour, from 
their long slumbers, his humble followers, to life and immortality! 

While standing amid this living multitude, collected here, not 
to lay the foundation of a mighty edifice, where art and genius 
are to exert their power — nor yet to commence the settlement of 
a community, with whose future prospects our hopes and our 
fears may be mingled — but rather to pause, in the course of time, 



12 

and bestow an hour to higher purposes — ^\vhat a flood of feeling 
bursts upon the heart! What a vohime of deep and abiding in- 
struction is opened before us! That populous city, over which 
we cast our eye — that placid river, bold and beaiUiful, that 
intervenes — that structure, which is soon to be dedicated to reli- 
gious education — the evidences around us, that industry and en- 
ergy are intent upon high achievement — all these remind us 
that we are but the actors in the drama of to-day! The flood and 
the ebb of that river are our monitors! We have seen its many 
changes; and our change must come at last! The current of our 
existence becomes more rapid as we approach its close! Soon 
the hum of that busy community will be stilled, and the thousands 
who inhabit it disappear! The grave will claim its tenant, as 
generation after generation shall succeed each other in the swift 
march of time! Yes, we, .too, must die! — and it is the part of true 
philosophy to fulfil the end of our being, as Heaven has ordained it. 

"The number of the dead," says Sir Thomas Brown, "long ex- 
ceedeth all who shall live! The night of time far surpasseth the 
day! — and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds 
unto the current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment! — 
and yet, were the happiness of the next world as clearly appre- 
hended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live!" 
We leave with you the application. 

In the Catacombs of Paris, set apart for the bodies disinterred 
from the cemetery of the Innocents, over the principal gateway 
was inscribed, ^'■Deaih is eternal sleep.''' This was the boast of 
Infidelity — the proud blasphemy of an age of Atheists. Upon 
yon entrance, so simple and yet in such fine keeping with the 
whole economy of this wide enclosure, is written, "/ am the re- 
surrection and the life: If any man believe in me^ though he 
were dead yet shall he live; and he that believeth on me shall 
never dieJ' That sentiment was uttered by Him who spake as 
never man spake; who calmed the tempest and raised the dead ! 
It was spoken by Him whose body was once sepultured, but rose 
again, triumphant over Death and the Grave ! 

In the spirit of this animating assurance, we may joyfully re- 
sign our mortal remains to the tomb; for it then becomes no other 
than the house of God — the very gate of Heaven ! 



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